Mulch

In a drought, I can’t not blog about mulch at least once. Even in a normal summer, I don’t think I could grow vegetables without mulch—it’s just too dry and the sun is too intense.

We mulch with grass clippings, and the mulch serves a number of purposes. First, it disposes of the grass clippings, which would otherwise end up sitting clumped on the lawn, or fill up the already overflowing compost bins.

But the mulch is more than that. It holds moisture in the soil, so I don’t need to water as frequently. It also suppresses weeds, which is absolutely essential for my sanity—without it, I’d be spending every waking moment just weeding from September to April.

Grass clippings are particularly nice because they aren’t as attractive to slugs as the alternatives (pea straw or barley straw), they have a fine texture that can be gently nestled around even small plants, and they don’t blow away like other mulches do.

The only problem lies in getting enough for all our needs in early summer. It takes a lot of mowing to mulch all our garden beds!

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

2 thoughts on “Mulch”

Do you have to use dry clippings? Here in the UK most of the time clippings are going to be damp.
I’ll be making a veg plot for the first time and I may well use your idea of grass cuttings for mulching!